AP – President Barack Obama is pictured during a commercial break as he talks with host Jon Stewart as he … .By DARLENE SUPERVILLE, Associated Press Darlene Superville, Associated Press – 1 hr 14 mins agoWASHINGTON – President Barack Obama apparently thinks politics is no laughing matter, even when he's staring down a comedian. Obama barely cracked any jokes during an appearance Wednesday on "The Daily Show" despite host Jon Stewart's attempts to draw out the president's humorous side with a few of his own snarky wisecracks.

Less than a week before the critical Nov. 2 congressional elections, Obama said he hopes Democratic lawmakers who made tough votes will be rewarded with another term in office. He promised more accomplishments in the two years left on his own term in the Oval Office and urged people to vote — early if they can.

Stewart asked how the political environment got to the point that Democrats "seem to be running on 'Please, baby, one more chance'" just two years after Obama ran a successful presidential campaign built around "very high rhetoric, hope and change."

"Are you disappointed in how it's gone?" asked the Comedy Central satirist.

Obama seemed to suggest that he wasn't disappointed. He said his advisers had told him during the euphoria of his 2008 election to "enjoy this now because two years from now folks are going to be frustrated. That is, in fact, what's happening."

He listed as reasons a 9.6 percent unemployment rate, sinking housing values and an economy that is growing but not fast enough. But Obama said his administration has also stabilized the economy, noting it has grown for nine months in a row. He also signed major health care and financial legislation. Obama suggested that his administration did so much that "we have done things that some folks don't even know about."

The comment seemed to catch Stewart by surprise.

"What have you done that we don't know about?" he asked. "Are you planning a surprise party for us, filled with jobs and health care?"

Obama cited legislation extending health care to more children and broadening a national service program as examples.

"Over and over again, we have moved forward an agenda that is making a difference in people's lives each and every day," Obama replied. "Is it enough? No. And so I expect, and I think most Democrats out there expect, that people want to see more progress."

The interview, which allowed Obama to take his campaign message to the type of audience that gets political news from programs like Stewart's, seemed more wonkish than slapstick.

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The Fast Fix

Map snapshotStewart pressed Obama on the changed political climate in the country and questioned him about the new health care law. The president defended his record as well as Democrats, who are expected to suffer a drubbing at the polls Tuesday. Obama was the guest for the entire show. Stewart is taping the show in Washington this week ahead of a rally he's holding Saturday on the National Mall.

At one point, though, when Obama asked to say something about members of Congress, Stewart prompted laughter by asking, "Are you going to curse?"

Stewart poked at Obama for saying during the presidential campaign that "we are the ones we've been waiting for."

"So here you are, you're two years into your administration and the question that arises in my mind: Are we the people we were waiting for or does it turn out those people are still out there and we don't have their number?" the comedian intoned, suggesting that someone in the White House needs to call them up.

There was even more laughter when Obama used a now-notorious Washington phrase to defend Lawrence Summers, a top economic adviser who is leaving the administration at the end of the year. Stewart reminded Obama that he'd once said that different results won't come from the same people. Then Obama hired Summers, who had served in the Clinton administration.

Obama said Summers "did a heck of a job," to which Stewart said, "You don't want to use that phrase, dude."

That's because in 2005, then-President George W. Bush used the phrase to describe the job his emergency management director, Michael Brown, was doing after Hurricane Katrina's floodwaters had devastated New Orleans.

On the "Daily Show," Obama said he hopes voters will reward some Democrats from largely conservative districts who took votes they knew would be bad politically but did so anyway because they thought it was the right thing to do. He named freshman Rep. Tom Perriello of Virginia, who voted for Obama's health care overhaul and is in a tight race re-election race. Obama plans to campaign with Perriello on Friday.

"My hope is that those people are rewarded for taking those tough votes," Obama said. "If they are, then I think Democrats will do fine on Election Day."

Who is the largest single political contributor in the 2010 campaign cycle? You can be pardoned if you answer, erroneously, that it's some new conservative group organized by Karl Rove. That's campaign spin by the Obama Democrats, obediently relayed by certain elements of the so-called mainstream media.

The real answer is AFSCME, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. The union's president, Gerald McEntee, reports proudly that AFSCME will be contributing $87.5 million in this cycle, entirely or almost entirely to Democrats. "We're spending big," he told the Wall Street Journal. "And we're damn happy it's big."

The mainstream press hasn't shown much interest in reporting on unions' campaign spending, which amounted to some $400 million in the 2008 cycle. And it hasn't seen fit to run long investigative stories on why public employee unions--the large majority of which work for state and local governments--contribute so much more to campaigns for federal office.

The problem is that, as Roosevelt understood, public employee unions' interests are directly the opposite of those of taxpayers.Nor has it denounced the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision last January allowing unions to spend members' dues on politics without their permission and without disclosure.

AFSCME's No. 1 status is emblematic of a change in the union movement over the years. Before public employee unions won the right to represent employees in New York City in 1958 and federal employees in 1962, almost all union members worked in the private sector.

But unions today represent only 7 percent of private-sector workers. In 2009, for the first time in history, most union members were public employees.

This would not have gone down well with President Franklin Roosevelt. "The process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service," he said in the 1930s. A public employee strike, he said, "looking toward the paralysis of government by those who have sworn to support it, is unthinkable and intolerable."

It still is at the federal level, thanks to presidents of both parties and especially to Ronald Reagan's firing of the striking air traffic controllers in 1981. But successful strikes in many states and cities have given public employee unions huge clout and hugely generous salaries, benefits and pensions.

Even more important is the political reality that, as New York union leader Victor Gotbaum said in 1975, "We have the ability, in a sense, to elect our own boss."

The anomalies don't end there. Public employees' union dues and contributions to union PACs come from directly from taxpayers. So if you live in a state or city with strong public employee unions, you are paying a tax that goes to elect Democratic candidates (plus, perhaps, a few malleable Republicans).

The problem is that, as Roosevelt understood, public employee unions' interests are directly the opposite of those of taxpayers. Public employee unions want government to be more expensive and government employees to be less accountable.

Yes, some union leaders like the late Albert Shanker of the American Federation of Teachers have been concerned about the quality of public services. But they have been the exception rather than the rule.

Public employee unions have collected big time from the Obama Democrats. The February 2009 stimulus package contained $160 billion in aid to state and local governments. This was intended to, and did, insulate public employee union members from the ravages of the recession that afflicted those unfortunate enough to make their livings in the private sector.

How it benefited the society as a whole is less clear. State governments in California, Illinois, New York and New Jersey are facing enormous budget deficits and much, much greater pension liabilities. Much of the life of their private-sector economies has been sucked out by the public employee unions, with a resulting flight of middle-income citizens unable or unwilling to bear such burdens.

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, elected in 2009, has become a kind of folk hero for his defiance of the states' teacher unions, which expect 4 percent raises in years of no growth or inflation and balk at having members pay any share of health insurance premiums.

Public employee union members have become, as U.S. News Editor in Chief Mortimer Zuckerman writes, "the new privileged class," with better pay, more generous benefits and far more lush pensions than those who pay their salaries--and who are taxed to send money to their leaders' favored candidates.

Critical parts of the coalition that delivered PresidentObama to the White House in 2008 and gave Democrats controlof Congress in 2006 are switching their allegiance to theRepublicans in the final phase of the midterm Congressionalelections, according to the latest New York Times/CBS Newspoll.

Republicans have wiped out the advantage held by Democrats inrecent election cycles among women, Catholics, less affluentAmericans and independents; all of those groups broke for Mr.Obama in 2008 and for congressional Democrats when theygrabbed both chambers from the Republicans four years ago,according to exit polls.

Yes, but many inexperienced newcomers are making a huge impact elsewhere.

RCP has the best coverage. They moved largely to polls measuring likely voters. I don't trust polls but you see where different polls show very similar things. They are all trying to get their final poll accuracy up right now for that is what their professional reputation will be based on. http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2010/senate/2010_elections_senate_map.html

If held today, Republicans (at 49) fall short of 51 but pick up 8+ Scott Brown making 9 since the Al Franken travesty giving Dems 60. That is a big deal. And that is conceding Boxer, W.V., and Patty Murray which are still possible.

There are some big, big stories in this. Tossing out incumbent Republicans was part of it, in Utah, Alaska (maybe) and Pennsylvania, anybody remember Arlen Specter (R-PA)? Sends a message to the others. Tossing out Harry Reid is HUGE. If he wins close he is still permanently injured. Feingold - Wisconsin? Out! And a common sense conservative businessman in! Obama's seat in Illinois - possibly lost.

Watch for recount troubles and legal challenges. This isn't over when the polls close.

Look at what is still on the table for 2012 senate races. Those senators know it won't be 2006 over again in states like Montana and Virginia and that should affect their wish to separate from the leftist agenda, dead in its tracks.

Generic poll gives probably the best overall look. http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/other/generic_congressional_vote-901.html From -12 for R's in Jan 09 to about +6 now, an 18 point move in underlying philosophy separate from the individual story of the local candidates in less than 2 years. Wow!

That did not come from having Republicans sound more like Democrats to win as many wanted in Delaware.

Obama’s “Enemies” List Includes Youposted at 12:44 pm on October 27, 2010 by Howard Portnoy

Are Americans who oppose the policies of the Obama administration enemies of the president and by extension the state? Obama seems to think so. In a shocking audio clip captured at The Blaze, the president can be heard telling an unidentified interlocutor that

f Latinos sit out the election instead of saying, ‘We’re gonna punish our enemies and we’re gonna reward our friends who stand with us on issues that are important to us’ … then I think it’s gonna be harder. [Emphasis added]

So much for the antiquated notion that the president of the United States is elected to serve all Americans, and not just those who voted for him or accept his current views.

In a separate address to an audience in Rhode Island, Obama made a similarly outrageous statement. Drawing upon his tired “car in the ditch” metaphor for perhaps the ten thousandth time, he told voters that now that progress has been made[!],

we can’t have special interests sitting shotgun. We gotta have middle class families up in front. We don’t mind the Republicans joining us. They can come for the ride, but they gotta sit in back.[Emphasis added]

At least the president deserves credit for openly admitting that he views those in opposition to his policies as second-class citizens. During the year-long debate on health care reform, he forced the Republican minority in Congress to “sit in the back,” refusing to entertain even one of their ideas, then accused them of obstructionism when he couldn’t cobble together enough votes from his own party to get the bill using approved measures.

When George W. Bush sat in the Oval Office, opponents of his policies obscenely burned the president in effigy, then excused their actions by claiming that dissent is the highest form of patriotism. Now we are told by no less than the president himself than even peaceful dissent is a no-no. Disconnect, anyone?

Cross-posted from Libertarian Examiner. Follow me on Twitter or join me at Facebook. You can reach me at howard.portnoy@gmail.com or by posting a comment below.

"New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, elected in 2009, has become a kind of folk hero for his defiance of the states' teacher unions, which expect 4 percent raises in years of no growth or inflation and balk at having members pay any share of health insurance premiums."

A relative of mine is a teacher in NJ and a Republican - very rare. I ask her what gives with teachers? She states all they care about is themselves. Their hatred of Christie is legendary so to speak here. She states their dues are collected whether they want in or not. No choice. And NO say how it is spent by the union. All of it goes to Democrats - ALWAYS. And the crats are then beholden to them. She states none of them seem to care that the state will go broke if changes are not made. It is all about themselves.

I asked her who do they think is going to pay for all their benefits as we already have the HIGHEST property tax in the nation?

Obama had his birth certificate question, his Marxism ties, his radical reverend, past cocaine use, no college records, no executive experience, no foreign policy experience, no senatorial experience, etc. etc. but they never got him for being unfaithful to his wife. Clinton is his own exception, no one can get away with what he can. Everyone knows that Republicans are held to a different standard. Reagan was a divorced and re-married man, but that was 3 decades before running, 4 years between wives and at a different time and had no other reason to make anyone look any further into it. Gingrich's issues were during his power and during Clinton's impeachment.

I honestly think this is a deal-killer. Newt is brilliant - the closest we have to someone prepared to step up, run and lead. If John Edwards and Gary Hart can't come back on the Dem side, no one can overcome this on the R side. Obama can lie cheat and openly steal and then run for reelction as the more moral alternative. Characters matters for the highest office.

I have to say same for Palin. She had a choice of continuing to make a huge national impact or completing her term as Governor. I think she made the right choice but a resigned Governorship, her strongest credential, is not the path to the Presidency.

Well, its kinda hard for the Dems to argue about the importance of fidelity, and Newt has gone Catholic and his the portion of his base that cares about such things is based upon a religion of forgiveness and redemption.

As for SP, I think it remains to be seen. FWIW my wife (and therefore I ) watches DWTS and it is very interesting to see the reactions to Bristol Palin; a girl from a town of 10,000 whose teenage pregancy by a dingleberry was a subject of ferocious MSM attention during a bitter presidential campaign has gone far further in the contest than her actual dancing skill has earned (it must be noted she is competing against pro-athletes and professional entertainers like Brandy). This means there is a sizable demographic that is supporting her. I think it is no co-incidence that when Sarah was there to watch and something happened that left the inference that she had been booed by the crowd that on the next show, DWTS made a very particular point of showing that the booing had been directed at a decision by the judges and not SP; not a snarky note to it to be found-- quite the contrary.

This suggests to me that the Hollywood folks are seeing the power of pro-Palin deomographics and has decided not to fcuk with it.

Anway, Sarah has the spotlight and it is up to her what she does with it.

"I honestly think this is a deal-killer. Newt is brilliant - the closest we have to someone prepared to step up, run and lead. If John Edwards and Gary Hart can't come back on the Dem side, no one can overcome this on the R side. Obama can lie cheat and openly steal and then run for reelction as the more moral alternative. Characters matters for the highest office."

Character does matter to me as it does to you and alot of us.Nonetheless my own guess it matters less to others.I could be wrong but I think what really did Newt in with his tanking personal poll numbers had nothing to do with leaving his wife (?with cancer) or the hypocracy of his going after Clinton for impeachment while he himself may have been dallying around but was his leading the charge to "shut down" the government. If I recall it was THIS that temporally correlated with his drop in approval ratings. It appears "the public" doesn't like government to shut down.

(I certainly am happy to shut down government with Bamster in charge!)

I think he could come back but I am less sure how he deals with his past issue of appearing to "shut down" the government. Even if it was at least a MSM hit job on him.On one hand we on the right do not want Republicans to compromise and "work" with the other side. On the other hand many voters I think want to stop the sides from never ending fighting and to work "together" to solve the countires problems.

I am not sure how he shoudl/could deal with this. If he can I I think he has the mouthpiece to resell himself. Then again his mouthpiece has also gotten himself into trouble if for no other reason that it gives fodder for the liberal MSM who love to crucify him.

According to political legend, John F. Kennedy didn't really know he'd won the 1960 presidential race against Richard Nixon until he received a late-night phone call from Chicago Mayor Richard Daley.

"Mr. President," Daley intoned. That greeting told JFK that the Chicago Democratic machine had worked its magic, voting enough tombstones and "ghosts" to put Kennedy over the top in Illinois and into the White House.

Fifty years later, Democrats are still up to their old tricks. As Chuck Goudie of WLS-TV reports:

An Illinois county election official says that thousands, and potentially hundreds of thousands, of voters who are expecting a ballot sent to them by mail may be disenfranchised.

Chicagoan Rosia Carter is one of 404,000 registered Illinois voters who recently received vote-by-mail requests that were sent by the Illinois Democratic Coordinated Campaign.

"By the time I filled it out and sent it in, my vote would not get counted," Carter said.

She and others called the I-Team when they noticed the return address is not their local election official but instead a PO box for the organization. IDCC officials claim they are entering ballot request information into their own database before sending the mailings on to election authorities who then mail voters the ballot.

The Lake County clerk received a shipment of 500 ballot requests from the IDCC Tuesday. By law, her office has two days to process the ballot requests. The problem is, Thursday is the deadline for election officials to get the ballots out.

IDCC told the clerk that another 1,500 ballot requests are headed to her office, which, she says, may not give her enough time to process all the ballots, potentially disenfranchising voters.[snip]

Carter and others who contacted the I-Team are furious that their vote may also be thrown out because the IDCC put the registered voters' wrong birthdate on the form.

In case you're wondering, a spokesman for the IDCC told WLS they used their organization's post office box as a return address to "better track the process and make sure there are fewer problems." And apparently, he said it with a straight face.

But the potential for political chicanery doesn't end with the potential disenfranchisement of thousands of voters. As Erick Erickson of Red State postulates, the Dims could simply rush to a (friendly) federal judge and demand an extension of submission times and tabulating periods so that "every vote counts." When that happens, the Democrats can tap into a pool of thousands of additional votes. It won't elect (or re-elect) a president, but it could be enough to sway hotly-contested Senate races in Illinois.

The remedy for conservatives is simple. Turn out in such huge numbers that it becomes impossible for Democrats to steal the election. But in the blue states, that's easier said than done. Besides, if the machine can't conjure up enough votes on election night, there's always Step Two in the Democratic playbook. Flood the zone with lawyers and start recounting until you achieve the desired result.

If you can, make a last-minute donation to Mark Kirk or Bill Brady, or volunteer some time for their campaigns. They need all the help they can muster in defeating their opponents--and the Democratic machine.***ADDENDUM: And oddly enough, a similar scandal is unfolding in Pennsylvania's 8th Congressional District, where Democratic incumbent Patrick Murphy is in the fight of his political life. Hundreds of voters in the district were warned that their votes might not count unless they returned an enclosed absentee ballot to a post office box in Bristol, Pennsylvania. The box was controlled by Murphy's campaign manager, who then "re-mailed" the ballots to the local election board.

As National Review has learned, there was a sudden surge in Democratic absentee ballots in the district last week, and many were mailed in identical, pre-labeled envelopes. Local GOP officials say some of the suspicious ballots were post-marked as far back as August, suggesting they had been held by a third party--perhaps the same individual who controlled the P.O. box where they were mailed? You know, the same guy running Murphy's re-election bid?

At this point, there's no proof that Congressman Murphy was involved. Officials with his campaign insist that no ballots sent to the post office box were discarded or tampered with.

In a radio interview that aired Monday on Univision, President Obama chided Latinos who "sit out the election instead of saying, 'We're gonna punish our enemies and we're gonna reward our friends who stand with us on issues that are important to us.' " Quite a uniter, urging Hispanics to go to the polls to exact political revenge on their enemies - presumably, for example, the near-60 percent of Americans who support the new Arizona immigration law.

This from a president who won't even use "enemies" to describe an Iranian regime that is helping kill U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan. This from a man who rose to prominence thunderously declaring that we were not blue states or red states, not black America or white America or Latino America - but the United States of America.

This is how the great post-partisan, post-racial, New Politics presidency ends - not with a bang, not with a whimper, but with a desperate election-eve plea for ethnic retribution.

HENDERSON, Nev. — The knock on the front door elicited the annoyed yapping of an unseen dog, followed by the appearance of a gray-haired man busily eating chips from a bag. His callers were two union workers, canvassing the neighborhood on behalf of Democrats, especially Senator Harry Reid.

The man said that he knew Mr. Reid, and that Mr. Reid was an idiot. So was his Republican opponent, Sharron Angle. In fact, said the man, a retired steelworker named Mario Mari, he might very well choose a third option here in Nevada: the phantom candidate known as None of the Above.

“This country is going down,” Mr. Mari said, before closing the door to a bleak Nevada landscape, where jobs are few and foreclosures many.

This is the up-for-grabs Third Congressional District, the most populous in Nevada and the most contested in this state’s contentious Senate race, sprawling across the dry terrain to form a kind of martini glass around the olive of downtown Las Vegas. It is here, in this packed suburban stretch of terra cotta roofs and crushed-rock yards adorned with Halloween skulls and campaign signs, that the battle for the country’s direction is being waged.

The two candidates could not be more ideologically different. But in these last frantic days of an extremely tight and unpleasant campaign, one with implications for the balance of power in Washington, they are united by the same problem: the voters of Nevada do not particularly like either of them.

“More people in Nevada dislike these candidates than like them,” said Ryan Erwin, a Republican consultant in Las Vegas. As a result, he added, “It’s going to be about which side is going to persuade voters that the other candidate is worse.”

On one side, the incumbent of two dozen years: Mr. Reid, 70, the Senate majority leader, a close ally of President Obama and, behind the scenes, a flinty, old-school Nevadan. But if a microphone appears, he assumes the persona of a wan, Old West undertaker whose own pulse needs to be checked.

In addition to giving interviews and busily visiting key racial, ethnic and union groups, the senator is counting on a highly disciplined ground game — put in place after Republicans swept into state offices in 2002 — that does everything from sending out door-knocking union members to providing hotel maids and blackjack dealers free bus rides to early voting sites.

Finally, the Reid campaign’s closing-argument commercials are casting Ms. Angle as a flaky, even dangerous extremist. The most recent commercial for the Reid campaign ends with: “Sharron Angle? Pathological.”

On the other side, the challenger from out of nowhere: Ms. Angle, 61, this season’s anti-Obama Tea Party standard-bearer. A former schoolteacher, state legislator and competitive weight lifter, she has choice words for Washington and curious words for the rest of the country, as when she suggested that Islamic religious law had taken hold in two American communities. But if a microphone appears, she begins to play hide-and-seek: she hides, reporters seek.

Ms. Angle has emerged as a candidate wary of some of her Republican colleagues, and the feeling is often mutual. Sometimes she listens to the professional Republican consultants who have descended on this race; sometimes she does not. While they want her to avoid the press, they do not want her to be seen running away from cameras — which has become a common sight on Nevada television, one that some Republicans say is entirely of Ms. Angle’s design.

Although Ms. Angle usually flees microphones, she speaks clearly through her campaign commercials, which question the source of Mr. Reid’s wealth and portray him as a calcified Obama toady who all but invites thuggish undocumented immigrants to your family’s Thanksgiving.

In their own ways, then, both candidates are asking the same plaintive question in this close race: What are you thinking, Nevada?

In one of the storefronts of a tired, partly vacant shopping center blessed by the bright lights of a central Las Vegas casino called Arizona Charlie’s, a clutch of Republicans spent Tuesday night making telephone calls to registered Republicans. Words on a grease board underscored their mission’s importance:

“Dirty Harry won by 428 votes in 1998. How many calls did YOU make today?”

Jesse Law, 28, a mortgage broker with Tea Party credentials, sat among a half-dozen other volunteers who, by the end of the day, were to have made more than 2,200 calls from this office alone. When not working at a Republican phone bank, he is leading groups of canvassers through the almost identical subdivisions carpeting the southern Nevada desert. His message is consistent:

Oust Reid.

This mantra binds the various bands of Nevada Republicans and Tea Party members, who normally find their oxygen in internal squabbling. It is a strange moment of unification, though, given how divisive a figure Ms. Angle has been.

According to a profile in The Las Vegas Review-Journal this spring, the deeply religious Ms. Angle underwent a political conversion after surviving a medical crisis — a tumor blocking her spinal fluid — three decades ago. A friend confided that she had seen Deborah, a heroine from the Old Testament, while dreaming about Ms. Angle, who interpreted this as a sign.

“Deborah was really the first woman politician,” Ms. Angle told the newspaper.

Ms. Angle went on to become a pro-gun, anti-tax state legislator from northern Nevada who relished being the antiestablishment outsider. In 2008, for example, she unsuccessfully challenged a veteran Republican leader from Reno, State Senator William J. Raggio, in a mean primary. Then, in the Republican primary for the United States Senate in June, she came from far behind to beat several established candidates, including Sue Lowden, a former chairwoman in the state Republican Party.

The hurt feelings created by her audacity have not eased. Mr. Raggio, who is among several prominent state Republicans reluctantly supporting Mr. Reid, recently issued a statement that criticized Ms. Angle’s unwillingness to work with others, even those in her own party, as well as “her extreme positions” on a range of issues.

Some Republicans fear losing such a powerful ally in Washington — no matter that his name is Reid — at a time when Nevada is in precarious economic shape. And Ms. Angle’s relationship with Republicans in Washington is complicated. She eyes them warily, while they fret that their overt help might offend her Tea Party supporters.

Even so, Ms. Angle is not above accepting the help of the Republican establishment, whether by receiving significant financial support from, say, Senator Jim DeMint of South Carolina, or holding an event on Friday night with Senator John McCain of Arizona. She melds the inside with the outside, as when, during a recent appearance with Newt Gingrich, she told her supporters — “Nevada patriots,” she called them — that she wanted to cut any federal spending not provided for in the Constitution.

Still, it seems that no adviser can stop Ms. Angle from being herself, as when she suggested to a rural community that Islamic religious law had taken hold in Dearborn, Mich., and Frankford, Tex., which no longer exists. (“I think that’s arguably the craziest thing that she has said, and the most dangerous,” said Jon Ralston, who writes the state’s most influential political column for The Las Vegas Sun.)

Her candor has caused advisers to suggest that she lie low in these last days, so low that reporters have relied on the Twitter messages of a Democrat dressed as a chicken to track Ms. Angle’s whereabouts.

But Ms. Angle’s outlandish comments and harsh commercials — juxtaposing menacing, dark-skinned men with anxious white people — have not affected her ability to raise and spend money. From July 1 to Oct. 13, her campaign spent $16.9 million, well more than the $11.2 million spent by the Reid campaign, and her advisers say their ground game is better than people might imagine.

In a union hall tucked among subdivisions and wisps of desert, some steelworkers, letter carriers and culinary workers filed in to get their Saturday morning coffee and marching orders before heading out to canvass for Democrats. Many of them passed a handwritten sign suggesting how to respond to “Reid Distrust.” It advised:

“Acknowledge: ‘I hear you, but despite what the media says ... Harry brings it home for NV.”

Mike Reinecke, the state political director of Labor 2010, the A.F.L.-C.I.O.’s get-out-the-vote program, gave a pep talk and released them with: “See your captains, grab your packets and let’s hit the pavement.”

Union members have knocked on 200,000 doors and made 48,000 calls as part of a one-vote-at-a-time effort by Democrats to counter a general disgust with the establishment — personified these days by Mr. Reid, who might otherwise be seen as a Horatio Alger character from Nevada: a poor, pugnacious kid from Searchlight who rose to become a power broker able to secure federal money for large, jobs-creating state projects.

Well aware that polls show Ms. Angle slightly ahead, Mr. Reid has been forced to shed his dour Washington persona and stump like a challenger. At a recent rally in Las Vegas’s Chinatown, he posed for photographs for 45 minutes with any supporter who wanted one, then left to shake hands and share hugs at a barbecue with black supporters.

Still, Mr. Reid cannot deny being such a creature of distant Washington that he made the tone-deaf decision years ago to move into the Ritz-Carlton — a name that, in these hard Nevadan times, smacks of exclusive luxury. And for all his kisses and embraces, he still has that undertaker’s parched look; he still has that propensity for clumsy statements, as when he recently suggested that: “But for me, we’d be in a worldwide depression.”

With all this in tow, Richard and Tracy Griffin, a married couple who, as letter carriers, know how to calm barking dogs, headed out into the key Third Congressional District, where the chocolate-brown Black Mountains loom in the distance, the deep cuts in their sides all that exist of luxury developments never completed.

In recent elections, the global-positioning systems used by the union door-knockers could not keep up with all the new roads. Now the district is the foreclosure capital of a state that is the foreclosure capital of the nation — and Mr. Reid needs the votes of its anxious, angry electorate.

“In the beginning it was very tough,” Ms. Griffin said as she went door to door, talking to laid-off workers, cranky retirees, homeowners nervous about the future. “It seems to be changing now, as we get closer to the elections, and the realization of putting her in office is starting to hit people. We have rarely heard a pro-Angle, it’s usually —— ”

I am amazed that there has been no change in the political fundamentals since the health care bill passage in March, against the will of the people. The gulf oil spill came and went. The opportunity for Dems to steal a couple of pro-growth economic ideas from their opponents and at least partially fix things came and went. The only thing that has changed has really just been voters becoming more and more certain that they don't like what they see.

Republicans released a governing agenda that went by largely unnoticed. Divided government will be a mess but better than most of the alternatives.

Tomorrow, everyone needs to call everyone they consider like minded with their own 'get out the vote' campaign.

I was thinking that for your liberal friends and family you might want to check in on them in person tomorrow, fairly early, buy and drop off a couple of DVDs each of maybe a season of their favorite show or favorite concert DVDs and a couple of bottles of nice wine (or Jack Daniels) to make staying at home for the day more comfortable and enjoyable.

In remarks prepared for delivery to a rally in Cincinnati with Rob Portman, the GOP nominee for Senate in Ohio, and John Kasich, the GOP nominee for Ohio governor, Boehner says:

“Ladies and gentlemen, we have a president in the White House who referred to Americans who disagree with him as ‘our enemies.’ Think about that. He actually used that word. When Ronald Reagan, George Bush, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush used the word ‘enemy,’ they reserved it for global terrorists and foreign dictators — enemies of the United States. Enemies of freedom. Enemies of our country.

“Today, sadly, we have president who uses the word ‘enemy’ for fellow Americans — fellow citizens. He uses it for people who disagree with his agenda of bigger government — people speaking out for a smaller, more accountable government that respects freedom and allows small businesses to create jobs. Mr. President, there's a word for people who have the audacity to speak up in defense of freedom, the Constitution, and the values of limited government that made our country great. We don't call them ‘enemies.’ We call them ‘patriots.’”

Pornography and politicsRising to the occasionElectoral victory brings a surprising consequence: the winners look at smutOct 27th 2010

WHEN Barack Obama won the American presidency in 2008 his supporters cheered, cried, hugged—and in many cases logged onto their computers to look at pornography. And, lest Republicans crow about the decadence of their opponents, precisely the obverse happened when their man won in 2004.

That, at least, is the conclusion of a study by Patrick Markey of Villanova University, in Pennsylvania, and his wife Charlotte, who works at Rutgers, in New Jersey. The Markeys were looking for confirmation of a phenomenon called the challenge hypothesis. This suggests that males involved in a competition will experience a rise in testosterone levels if they win, and a fall if they lose.

The challenge hypothesis was first advanced to explain the mating behaviour of monogamous birds. In these species, males’ testosterone levels increase in the spring, to promote aggression against potential rivals. When the time comes for the males to settle down and help tend their young, their testosterone falls, along with their aggressive tendencies.

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Something similar has since been found to apply to fish, lizards, ring-tailed lemurs, rhesus monkeys, chimpanzees—and humans. In many of these animals, though, there is a twist. It is not just that testosterone ramps up for breeding and ramps down for nurturing. Rather, its production is sensitive to a male’s success in the breeding competition itself. In men, then, levels of the hormone rise in preparation for a challenge and go up even more if that challenge is successfully completed. Failure, by contrast, causes the level to fall.

Previous research has found these hormonal ups and downs in male wrestlers, martial artists, tennis players, chess players and even people playing a coin-flip game. In evolutionary terms, it makes sense. If a losing male continues to be aggressive, the chances are he will be seriously injured (it is unlikely natural selection could have foreseen competitive coin-tossing). Turning down his testosterone level helps ward off that risk. Conversely, the winner can afford to get really dominant, as the threat of retaliation has receded.

For most species, determining that this actually happens requires a lot of boring fieldwork. But the Markeys realised that in the case of people they could cut the tedium by asking what was going on in those parts of the web that provide a lot more traffic than their users will ever admit to, on the assumption that men fired up by testosterone have a greater appetite for pornography than those who are not.

To do this they first used a web service called WordTracker to identify the top ten search terms employed by people seeking pornography (“xvideos” was the politest among them). Then they asked a second service, Google Trends, to analyse how often those words were used in the week before and the week after an American election, broken down by state.

Their results, just published in Evolution and Human Behavior, were the same for all three of the elections they looked at—the 2004 and 2008 presidential contests, and the 2006 mid-terms (in which the Democrats made big gains in both houses of Congress). No matter which side won, searches for porn increased in states that had voted for the winners and decreased in those that had voted for the losers. The difference was not huge; it was a matter of one or two per cent. But it was consistent and statistically significant.

If the polls are right, then, next Tuesday’s mid-term elections will see red faces in the red states for those furtive surfers who are caught in the act. In the blue states, meanwhile, a fit of the blues will mean the screens stay switched off.

The Foundation"All men having power ought to be distrusted to a certain degree." --James Madison

Editorial Exegesis"Republicans celebrating yesterday's ballot-box drubbing of Democrats should not be lulled into thinking their virtues carried the day. The election was first and foremost a referendum on the policies of President Obama and congressional Democrats. That verdict was clear: The American people want change. Not the empty phrases promising 'change' that scrolled across Mr. Obama's teleprompter during the 2008 campaign. By now, voters have realized there is no difference between the statist policies of FDR and LBJ and those on offer from BHO. The public is demanding an immediate change away from the big-government direction of Congress and this administration. That's why California Democratic Rep. Nancy Pelosi's brief four-year grasp on the speaker's gavel will come to an end in January. ... Newly elected Tea Partiers are likely to remain true to their platform of reducing taxation and regulation so that the economy might have room to grow. But if history is any guide, establishment Republicans will need to be continually reminded why they were given a governing majority. The Republican congressional sweep in 1994 promised to shake up the way things had been done for decades, and the new majority delivered in the early years. By 2006, Republicans lost their way. Instead of standing on principle, most devolved into business-as-usual politicians desperate to retain office by spreading around the public's money in earmarks and other pork. They lost sight of why they went to Washington in the first place, and their fall was inevitable. When the contest is over who can spend the most, Democrats are going to win every time. Republicans who run on a message of fiscal restraint have a chance because Americans realize families and individuals will be the ones paying for the government's spending spree for decades to come. That's why fiscal conservatism has now carried the day. Should the new Congress hold true to the principles of limited government, Republicans will build upon a lasting majority as future ballots are cast for them, rather than against their opponents." --The Washington Times

It's Morning in America"Well, the big difference here and in '94 was you've got me." So said Barack Obama earlier this year on the campaign trail. He made a difference alright, just not the one Democrats were hoping to see.

As of this writing, Republicans are expected to pick up between 60 and 70 House seats. They needed 39 to gain control of the chamber and oust Nancy Pelosi from the speakership. In the Senate, the GOP picked up at least six seats, with three races too close to call. Democrats will hold onto the Senate, however, with at least 51 seats.

Republicans also picked up at least 10 governorships from Democrat control: Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, New Mexico, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Wisconsin and Wyoming. Along with numerous state house pickups, Republicans are now in position to control redistricting after the 2010 census.

Here are a few highlights (and lowlights) from congressional races. Republicans picked up Barack Obama's former Senate seat in Illinois, but lost Joe Biden's in Delaware. Marco Rubio easily won Florida's Senate seat over two challengers, while Republicans ousted Democrat incumbents in Wisconsin (Russ Feingold) and Arkansas (Blanche Lincoln).

Perhaps the biggest disappointment of the night was that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid beat Tea Party-backed challenger Sharron Angle. Then again, on the bright side, inept Harry Reid is still the Democrat leader.

On the House side, half of the Blue-Dog caucus of so-called "conservative" Democrats lost, dropping their numbers from 54 to 26. Of course, only 24 of those 54 voted against ObamaCare, which gives us an idea of just how "conservative" the caucus is. Numerous other Democrats went down in defeat, including longtime incumbents and even some committee chairmen.

We'll have more as the week unfolds, but to be clear, yesterday was not an embrace of the Republican Party. Far from it. But it was certainly a repudiation of Barack Obama, who personalized the election around his cult of personality. He even told Latinos that they should be inspired to "punish" their "enemies" on Election Day. More important, it was a rebuke of Democrats' hard push to the left with ObamaCare, cap and trade, financial regulation, looming tax increases for all Americans and massive deficit spending.

Yesterday, voters stood athwart history and yelled, "Stop!"

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Upright"I think that the message is unmistakable that the Obama agenda is dead. ... [N]ow it will depend on how Obama proceeds. He has now tried a two-year experiment in hyper-liberalism, and the country has said no." --columnist Charles Krauthammer

"Democrats will spin Harry Reid's victory and cling to it like the American people allegedly cling to their Bibles and guns, but I see a huge silver lining here for conservatives. ... Yes, Reid would have made a great trophy on the GOP's mantle. But cheer up: He's even better as a leader of Senate Democrats -- depending on your point of view." --columnist Stephen Spruiell

"I so want to believe that the tea party marks the beginning of a comeback for small government. But I'm probably deluding myself. I know that big government usually wins. Remember the last time the Republicans took power? They promised fiscal responsibility, and for six of George W. Bush's eight years, his party controlled Congress. What did we have to show for it? Federal spending increased by 54 percent. That's more than any president in the last 50 years." --columnist John Stossel

"[T]he GOP still faces significant challenges. Heck, an electoral bonanza notwithstanding, Republicans are still fairly unpopular. But if the first half of the Obama presidency proves anything, it is that straight-line predictions lead to political hubris. Events change and attitudes change with them, for every demographic." --columnist Jonah Goldberg

"The Constitution cannot protect us and our freedoms as a self-governing people unless we protect the Constitution. That means zero tolerance at election time for people who circumvent the letter and the spirit of the Constitution. Freedom is too precious to give it up in exchange for brassy words from arrogant elites." --economist Thomas Sowell

"America, its founding principles, its Constitution, its robust liberty tradition and its strength are being stolen out from under us by a man who has no appreciation for America's greatness and who has contempt for ordinary Americans (we're 'enemies'), whom he considers beneath him and unworthy of their sovereign prerogative to preserve this nation. The people have had enough. Consequently, absent unimaginable, comprehensive voter fraud ... we're going to see an unprecedented housecleaning." --columnist David Limbaugh

The Demo-goguesClinging to "hope": "Across the board, things have gotten better over the last two years. The question is can we keep that up. We can only keep it up if I've got the friends and allies in Congress, in statehouses. So even though my name is not on the ballot, my agenda -- our agenda -- is going to be dependent on whether folks turn out to vote today." --Barack Obama

Delusional: "The early returns show so far that a number of Democrats are coming out and we are on pace to maintain the majority in the House of Representatives." --soon to be former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Nial) early on election night

"We see high levels of energy on the Democratic side, we saw this early on in the early vote that were submitted, the Democratic votes, the early projections and now you are seeing strong turnouts by Democrats across the country in voting today. All this talk we heard from Washington trying to project the outcome of this election was so obviously immature. This is not over. Voters are sending the opposite message." --Democrat Congressional Committee Chairman Chris VanHollen (D-MD)

Huh? "I still carry this missionary zeal to transform the world." --California Governor-elect Jerry Brown, who seemed to be smoking something that didn't end up being legalized

Bitterly clinging to elitist thinking: "It's absurd. We've lost our minds. We're in a period of know-nothingism in the country, where truth and science and facts don't weigh in. It's all short-order, lowest common denominator, cheap-seat politics." --Sen. John Kerry (D-MA)

Faith in government: "Every single great idea that has marked the 21st century, the 20th century and the 19th century has required government vision and government incentive." --Joe Biden

Believable ... and scary: "We have done things that people don't even know about." --Barack Obama

DezinformatsiaUnfortunately, no: "Am I the last person in America who still adores President Obama?" --Slate columnist Curtis Sittenfeld

Who said it is? "A right-wing Republican takeover of Congress and state capitals isn't something to accept with indifference." --Newsweek's Jonathan Alter

Taxes are just great: "No one will talk about taxes. They are terrified. Somehow the religion, the anti-tax religion has gotten so bad that if you -- if anybody says, 'We're just going to have to [raise taxes],' I mean, it's as if, you know, you killed a baby or something." --CBS 60 Minutes correspondent Lesley Stahl (That shouldn't be a problem for your side, which advocates killing babies every day.)

Inevitable Nazi reference: "I mean it isn't far from what we saw in the '30s, where all of a sudden, political parties started showing up in uniform." --MSNBC's Chris Matthews

THE WEEKLY STANDARD has obtained a letter from Mike Pence, who is believed to be considering a presidential or gubernatorial run, informing his colleagues that he will not seek another term as chairman of the House Republican conference. "Now that we have restored a Republican majority to the House of Representatives and I have fulfilled my commitment to the Republican Conference, my family and I have begun to look to the future," Pence writes. Full letter here:

This was an amazing year. Historic wins but also some key losses and a sitting President not likely to change much. Maybe 65 seat gain in the House (which I see as a 130 vote swing). Huge wins in swing states Ohio, Pennsylvania, Florida. Disappointing losses in Colo and left coast.

One reason R's did better in house seats than senate was a shortage of qualified and experienced conservative candidates due to the big losses the last 2 cycles and that the House is better suited for entry level candidates. Crafty posed the question a few days ago regarding the fight between tea party and establishment GOP. That will certainly play out strongly in the upcoming Presidential contest as well as with policy positions and votes in the meantime.

A few of the tea party surprises turned out to be disappointments, but some of those were no-win situations. O'Donnell was the focus, but putting a RINO in for 6 years who votes with your opponents half the time has its own drawbacks, would not have won the senate and gives permanent bipartisan cover to those votes taken by Dems, whatever the issue. It was worth a couple losses to send a message to BOTH parties. Delaware is frankly not a red state and Nevada Hispanics I guess will have to live with 15% unemployment while they negotiate their border and amnesty differences with the party that supports their legal, economic freedoms.

Next time, in most of these cases, there will be better candidates available for senate races due to all these wins in the House, the Governorships and the state houses, though I fear we face a similar lack of readiness for a qualified Presidential candidate this cycle through most of the field. (Very interesting development regarding Mike Pence!)

Some stars were born: One is to give credit to Chris Christie (IMO) for starting this. Rubio! and may I be the first to nominate Mrs. Rubio for First Lady. Ron Johnson changed Wisconsin, first time candidate, ran like a pro and never flinched or looked back. Kristi Noem, already mentioned. Alan West! Rand Paul ran a tough race with everything thrown at him and will be quite a thorn if RINOs start talking about new entitlements or expanding federal programs.

Give credit where credit is due (from the NY Post), Democrats stubbornly built this backlash.

Among the OUT, Rep. Jim Oberstar (D-MN) Chairman of the powerful House Transportation Committee, representing an old time blue district from Duluth to the iron range cities for nearly 40 years ... OUT!

Republicans gained votes in every congressional district in the country! Unfortunately, any Dem that won this year is likely safe forever so don't look for any bipartisanship in the House.

I am wondering which of the Dem Senators from red states up in 2012 will be negotiable with the 48 R's and the House to move any legislation to Obama for key vetoes to be challenged in the next election. Here are 11 possibilities: Bill Nelson of Florida, Claire McCaskill of Missouri, Jon Tester of Montana, Ben Nelson of Nebraska, Jeff Bingaman of New Mexico, Kent Conrad of North Dakota, Sherrod Brown of Ohio, Bob Casey, of Pennsylvania, Jim Webb of Virginia, Joe Manchin of West Virginia (has to run again), and Herb Kohl of Wisconsin.

I will love to see how the new Congressional Black Caucus Meetings go with the new members joining (see Alan West video). I don't see a teleprompter writing his script.

Seems to me this goes to Murkowski. Margin of victory matters. Total write-ins lead Miller by 41 to 34%. Of those 41%, how many are not Murkowski or no good? Who knows but this was a hotly contested, 3-way race. I don't see why people would bother to go vote if they didn't have a clear preference.

Seems to me that maybe several hundred will be wrong or not Lisa with maybe several hundred others to argue over, but not 13-14,000 to be disqualified. The rules were clear and well-publicized. The name is familiar. The list is available, long but not that hard to read through. Seems to me that maybe several hundred will be wrong or not Lisa and several hundred others to argue over, but not 13 or14,000 to be disqualified.

I think Lisa, when she gets to Washington, will make us appreciate why people were taking such a big chance supporting inexperienced tea party candidates.

Looks like Murkowski has the votes. A so-called loss for the so-called tea party, but Miller became the endorsed Republican and Murkowski promised to sign again with the Republicans. Combined they took 75% of the vote and the Dem took less than 25%.

My initial thought was that Murkowski will retaliate against tea partiers who snubbed her. But it makes more sense to make peace with her own side. Running for nomination unopposed and staying out of jail will give her a seat in the senate for life if she wants it.

Murkowski draws a 'C' from the Club for Growth, she is not Pat Toomey but she is no Susan Collins either. Most likely she will continue on as she was, as a run-of-the-mill Republican, not visionary but right from my point of view on most of the issues: http://www.ontheissues.org/senate/Lisa_Murkowski.htm

Pick any issue you want, I see these 4 - Voted NO on Sonia Sotomayor and NO on Elena Kagan, Voted YES on Samuel Alito and John Roberts - and say... welcome back Lisa.

John Bolton on Aaron Klein radio this weekend and he reaffirmed he is thinking about running for Pres.His stance is Obama is no paying attention to foreign policy as he works to reconfigure our country at home.Sounds overall like a winning point. He has not come out and spoken of the domestic "issues" (pardon the phrase) yet.